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He is 60. His car dealerships and other business ventures are so successful and run by such
trusted personnel that the former New Albany resident has been able to cannonball back in to what
he truly loves: auto racing in general, and IndyCar racing in particular.

His Rahal Letterman Lanigan team is poised for another Indianapolis 500, a race he won in 1986
and his team won with Buddy Rice in 2004. And for the first time, he has his 24-year-old son,
Graham, by his side as a full-time driver.

Qualifying begins today for the race on May 26, with the first 24 spots out of 33 to be filled.
Although RLL also is sending out drivers James Jakes and Michel Jourdain Jr., the focus will be on
the father-son aspect.

Will it work?

“I sat Graham down after we made this deal, and I said, ‘Here’s my expectation for you,’ ” Bobby
Rahal said. “ ‘It’s not to win, though that would be great, but that’s not what I’m going to ask of
you. All I ask of you is that at the end of each day you be able to look in the mirror and say you
did your best job that day. And as long as you can do that, we’ll be in good shape.’ ”

At an age when kicking back a little would be excused, Bobby Rahal is intent on kicking his team
to a higher level, and it’s evident by how much time he spends on racing.

“Sixteen hours a day,” he said with a laugh. “My dealerships, I’m blessed to be involved with
great partners, and I’m not out there selling cars or doing the books. It’s a different role for
me. It allows me to really focus about 90 percent of my time on the racing side of things.”

Last year, longtime RLL general manager Scott Roembke died, leaving a void that Bobby Rahal has
largely stepped into. The job is made more time-consuming with the team’s shops split between the
BMW GT team of the American LeMans Series in Hilliard and the IndyCar team in Brownsville, Ind.

“I am much more involved now than I was three or four years ago,” Rahal said, “but I feel it’s
better for me, and it’s better for the team because the team knows I’m committed to this, that I’m
out there hustling on our behalf. It’s because we have jumped back into the fray, Graham is with us
now, and we have to be successful.”

The family name not only is on the sign, it’s on the line.

“This team is relying on me more than any other team I’ve driven for, in terms of my input, and
feel for the car and things, that’s been kind of cool,” Graham said. “Really, it’s how you want it
to be, and it’s a welcome opportunity for me.”

Graham understands the pressure his father feels.

“I see it, and I am sure running the team for me is going to put even more pressure on him,” he
said. “I’m his son, you know? He doesn’t want any hiccups around here. … You can tell how important
he thinks this fresh start is, and he wants to take the team forward.”

RLL technical director Jay O’Connell said team members have gotten the message. Not only did the
team win the Indianapolis 500 in 2004, it ushered Danica Patrick onto the big stage in 2005 and
came within a last-lap crash by Takuma Sato last year of perhaps winning again. But this is
different.“With Bobby and Graham getting back together, there is so much more emotion and passion
in the mix, that if you can channel that into success, it will really be good,” O’Connell said.

Team co-owner Mike Lanigan has been an advocate for Graham since 2006, “when he was still in
high school,” Lanigan said. He likes the timing of the father-son convergence.

“Bobby could not be a better teacher, in essence, to complete the master’s degree for Graham in
racing,” Lanigan said. “Graham learned everything pretty much on his own as he drove for other
teams. This is kind of like the icing on the cake.”

The trick is to avoid the pitfalls that could come from such a relationship.

“If there is a danger, and this is probably true for any company that’s family owned and you’ve
got fathers and their offspring involved, you really have to be careful to maintain the respect,
and maintain the professional approach to it,” Bobby Rahal said. “You can’t come down to a
screaming match — dad’s being unfair, the kid’s being a brat.”

He sent Graham on his own racing path almost a decade ago. He wanted his son to work for others,
like in the A1GP series when he traveled the world as a teenager racing against grown men, and in
Champ Car, when he drove for the Newman-Haas-Lanigan team in the last year before the merger with
IndyCar in 2008. In 2008 at age 19, Graham became the youngest driver to win an IndyCar race, and
it was in his first start at St. Petersburg, Fla.

In 2010, when Graham was between full-time rides, he ended up driving for four teams. The only
career life-preserver that his father tossed him was for the Indianapolis 500 because “no matter
what, it was important to maintain continuity in that race,” his father said.

Graham’s run with Chip Ganassi’s second IndyCar team the past two seasons showed promise at
times. He finished third at Indianapolis in 2011, and last year he was leading at Texas when he
grazed the wall on the penultimate lap, hanging on to finish second.

A second IndyCar victory has continued to elude him. At Long Beach, Calif., last month, he
finished second to Sato, now driving for the A.J. Foyt team.

“Graham has learned a lot on his journey, and he has had a lot of good races through the years
that frankly were spoiled by some bad strategy calls at times, and at times by some bad luck,”
Bobby said. “I know he has put a lot of pressure on himself to win. But he is in an environment
with this team where he shouldn’t doubt where he stands. That does a lot for a driver.”